The made-in-heaven combination of spice-infused pears, coffee, chocolate & hazelnuts make this dessert one divine dish and it can look really pretty & festive! The kicker is that it’s ridiculously simple to make.

Here’s my first attempt. Not too happy with the presentation (oh well, only had to impress Mr Lim, which isn’t too difficult. Almost everything I feed him is “MasterChef quality”, or so he says to keep the nagging at bay) Also, the pears could use abit of sugar when poaching, will add about 2 tablespoons of sugar next time.

Poached Pear Crumble with Custard

Ingredients:

1 ½ cup all purpose flour

¾ cup sugar

120 gms butter, room temperature

120 gms dark chocolate, chopped

3 tbs cocoa powder

4 tbs coffee powder

½ cup hazel nuts, chopped

5 pears

mixture of whole spices such as 2 cinnamon, 1 star anise and 5 cloves

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Centigrade. Peel the pears but leave the stalks intact.

Put the pears into a pan with 1 tbs coffee and your spice mixture.

Add enough water so that they are fully immersed. Boil on medium heat until a skewer can easily pierce the pears (about 30 minutes). Set the pears aside on a cooling rack.

Mix all the rest of the ingredients together in a food processor so that it resembles breadcrumbs.

Take 5 ramekins and place a poached pear into each one. Fill the ramekins all the way to the top with the crumble mixture. Pat down gently.

As an extension to the chick chick pie recipe, making a hearty nourishing cream of chicken soup is very much the same. The only major difference is that I’ve substituted the cream with milk….I’m a slave to my waistline, you see…. so my master says no to cream but feel free to indulge for a richer & more “campbell soup” tasting version.

Ingredients

50g butter (i tried to swap this with olive oil for a less fattening version, DON’T! It didn’t work. Unfortunately, like my waistline, it needs FAT for the thickening effect.)

Breakfast is probably my favorite meal, i can have it all day. That’s part of what I love about Australia, almost all the cafes have all day breakfast.

Of course, it’s terribly expensive to be dining out on breakfast too often so usually on weekends, either one of us would whip up a hearty brunch. This is my lazy version when I want something quick, steaming hot & comforting for breakfast. I make this when I don’t want to slave at the stove in my PJs.

I invented this dish so there isn’t really a proper recipe. It’s quite hard to have a recipe for something that’s simply thrown in together on a whim.

This recipe is for 1 person portion. Here’s the basic steps:

1. Preheat oven at 180C

2. Heat olive oil, saute chopped onions

3. Add in sliced Sausage (please get the good quality ones. For those who are still eating the processed cheap ones, I highly recommend you watch Jamie Oliver “Revolution” on how they’re made….you’ll never touch the processed ones again. It’s really really super gross)

This pie is so simple to make yet so delicious it’s ridiculous. The photo below is evidence of just that as it was made by a certain ms wilopo, who claims to be completely clueless when it comes to cooking. So if mel can do it, so can you!

Try it, you won’t regret it!

chicken pot pie

(recipe adapted from Good Food Australia)

Ingredients

50g butter (shortcut hint: it’s about 1/4 of a standard 250g block of butter so no need to take out the scales to weigh it)

Had my first foray into bread making and it was a surprisingly YUM & easy! Beauty of this recipe is you don’t need to pre-heat the oven beforehand, that cuts down cooking time compared to other typical bread recipes.

See the result:

Putting down the recipe here in case I lose the hand-scribbled version.

Pagnotta

Ingredients:

15g (1/2oz) Yeast

1/2 cup lukewarm water

3 cups flour

1/2 tsp sugar

1.5 tsp salt

1 tbsp oil

1 cup lukewarm water, extra plain flour

Method:

1. Crumble yeast into basin, add 1/2 cup warm water, sprinkle sugar into water, cover, stand in warm place for 15 to 20 mins or until mixture is foamy